The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Hiram had no memory of his mother. Which was strange considering he could remember everything else: the stories of others, the songs sung in the field and the words written on paper. But of his mother he knew nothing. Gone Nachez way he believed. Like many of the other Tasked, she was taken from her family and sold further south. He had his father and his brother, but they were both of the Quality, as much master as blood and the love of the father to son didn’t exist. That is until Maynard, the heir apparent of the plantation Lockless, drowned. Now Master Walker had to rethink what the future of Lockless would contain. But Hiram had other ideas. He was ready to run. Ready to take Sophia, the woman he was falling for, with him. Find the Underground and find freedom. But the story of his grandmother Santi Bess, lingered in him. The story of the woman who walked into the river one night, with forty others and disappeared, never to be seen again.

This is a beautiful novel but it is filled with loss and a lingering pain. It holds the pain of being a slave. The pain of having your family one moment and the next they are ripped from your hands and only their memory and the stories of them remains. The pain of knowing you aren’t free and that you are bidden to another and freedom could cost you your life. But this novel also holds a certain strength. The strength to prevail when all seems lost. The strength to fight over and over even though the losses are many. The strength to recognize people as they truly are, even when they’ve worked so hard to fool themselves. Then there’s love. The love you have for others and how distance can tear us apart but that love will remain. It’s amazing to me that Coates was able to so poignantly create this narrative of a slave who has a power within himself that he has yet to discover. How that power in many ways sets him free and gives him the ability to free others. This novel is Hiram’s journey but also the journey of many others and the themes align in such a way that it is reflective of the many slave narratives we know.

This is a novel I feel that only Coates could write. I’ve read his other books and the way his writing style was translated to a work of fiction is just masterful from the world building, to the characterizations, to the minute details, to the way the Tasked saw themselves and the way they observed the Quality. Hiram is very introspective and looks at his life and the life of the other Tasked with a critical eye. An eye that strips bare all of the mystery, all of the lies and lays the truth right in front of you. I loved him as the narrator. I loved seeing the world through his eyes, but like I mentioned earlier, I felt his pain. You can’t escape that pain of being Tasked and what that means. But he found a fire and that fire burned throughout the pages.

I’m walking away from this novel with a heavy heart. The brutality of slavery can never be forgotten and being trapped in that brutality for 300 pages is draining but this is a book I would have to recommend. Coates telling of this story is extremely intriguing while being settled in a painful truth. One that we don’t necessarily like to revisit but one that we must revisit. This is an incredible book that needs to be widely shared and discussed. I give this 5 out of 5 stars.

Thank you Netgalley for this book in exchange for an honest review.